


laugh til i cry

by Aris



Series: dreams (are for people who are sleeping) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, BoKuroo Week 2017, Depression, Established Relationship, Everyone is an animal shifter, Fluff, M/M, Magic, Non Binary Kenma, Self-Harm, Shapeshifting, Witches, it's 2017 and i finally caved and wrote furries i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: Here, fingertips red, warmth dripping to pool sluggishly in his palm,  staining  between his knuckles in ruddy ribbons; here is where he stops. And he asks himself;What am I trying to kill, really?**deleted scenes over at mywriting blogcheck 'em





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1) i started this with the intention of being alot longer but due to deadlines at uni i had to alter it halfway through to cut the length and therefore will be making it a series because  
> \- there is a lot of unexplained world building  
> \- resolution??? dont know her
> 
> 2) this feels very rushed to me and i hope to come back and improve it after exams  
> 3) for clarifications sake:  
> \- kuroo does see off spirits in his magical occupation. he also cares for his mothers witch shop. these arent things i explained very well in this part of the fic

Kuroo is more dark, than not.

Cut and bleeding, a lonely ritual between his mother and father. A void oozes up from the break in his life line, presses out in his father’s grip into the offering hands of a statue below. The cupped palms of bronze glow, his blood rots to a sickly black, and a ribbon is tied around his hand. This is a conformation, not a celebration; his fur grows in black, his canines so sharp they cut his lips every time frustration rises up – there is magic inside him, dark and potent enough to twist his shift into something monstrous. This is the last time his father touches him, trembling and exorcising, and Kuroo doesn’t look back at this moment.

(There were no candles. Kuroo had been to many ceremonies of this kind, had witnessed family and neighbours bleed into statues and jewels, has seen rainbows overflow from imbued palms and atop glimmering surfaces. There are always candles. Not only that, there is always food and incense and the warm wind of tails against one another, laughing and purrs and colourful bracelets hung around wrists. His kin celebrate this wildly, arrogantly; embrace the eve of their magical persuasions wholeheartedly and without reservations. Kuroo spills out on the kitchen counter, the only light yellow and prying from the ceiling above – they eat dinner earlier, and afterwards his parents argue for hours.

When he removes the ribbon, alone in his room, the scab is achingly black.)

He doesn’t.

He guides the dead, touches cold hands and smooths fragrant oils over decaying skin. Kids at school won’t play with him, teachers drop his work onto tables, flinch in terrible, tiny movements if he makes to take it from them bodily. There’s a zone around him, an invisible area of _don’t touch_ that was erected long before Kuroo could understand it. Long before he could reach out to prove otherwise. He exists separately from the others, as if they’re afraid he’ll take them before their time – as if Kuroo, small and weak, eight years old, could possibly hurt them. It buries something bitter in the fallow plains of his chest.

He grows into his shift in ways that leave those last few close childhood friends scampering. The soft curve of his mothers ears are lost to a predatory sharpness, long and pointed and oddly still. Controlled, his mother says, _dead_ , his peers say. They refuse to bow down in submission, in fear, but can angle strangely backwards to capture sound behind him - it’s eerie, when he catches it in the mirror. It shouldn’t be possible without a full shift.

It’s helpful, if helpful is too hear with a unerring accuracy exactly what those he passes have to say. Helpful, if helpful is to never give an indicator on how he feels. He takes these things as blessings, later on, a way to stay detached. Powerful. As a child, it’s only a fraction more devastating than everything else, when his parents can’t read his moods, when he can cry and bleed and shake and still feel his ears only halfway lowered. Like he’s anxious, not suicidal. Like he heard a loud noise.

He has to wonder if he’s feeling _anything_ , then.

Because he’s more dark than not, and it’s undercurrents. Deep river running far beneath the earth’s crust, ancient tunnels carved from drops and tears and waterfalls, hallowed passages lost in the blurry nowhere between surface and core. Bone dust and minerals, thick oils, sand so fine and cold soft skin, preserved in stale air. There are glimpses in caves and oceans, oozing water from flesh wounds which, among the plasma, carry with it shivers from far below, a chilled unrest palatable only under the sting of salt and iron.

This is where he finds it again within himself, years later. A place just out of reach of his nails, further even than his claws dream to tear through. Somewhere so dark he must bleed for hours to feel it slipping from him, and even in that instances only ever in the tiniest slivers. As if, somewhere between his split veins and his heart, it has slipped away through thin membrane to bury deep within lymph nodes, nestle beneath organs. It matters not how many layers he tears through reaching within, how much blood is spilt down his thighs, how much he shakes and shivers and sweats, pale and determined on the bathroom floor.

It doesn’t matter, because he can’t ever carve it out.

(Because it’s part of him. Protected alongside marrow, integrated in every blood cells sense of self. Integral to his functioning. The bitterness beneath his teeth, the sourness on his tongue.

Here, fingertips red, warmth dripping to pool sluggishly in his palm, between his knuckles in ruddy ribbons; here is where he stops. And he asks himself;

_What am I trying to kill, really?)_

* * *

On the mornings he awakens, sore and badly stitched together like the ghost of a family heirloom, Kenma is there.

This is no exception.

Today, they are stretched out along Kuroo’s chest, head rested on two paws and bottom half splayed to the side, white stomach visible. It’s their favourite way to lie, and something Kuroo has become over familiar with across the years of Kenma-style comfort. Kenma prefers their cat form to all else, and it’s a constant point of contention that they refuses to buy most furniture when they can ‘ _sleep in my shift, thank you very much_ ’; and, in all fairness, it is a very nice shift. Long haired and lithe, with a rare fur pattern.

Kuroo reaches out, and boops their nose. 

Instantly, Kenma’s entire face scrunches back, and one eye opens to regard him balefully in the dim light, elegant features twisted in disgust. Despite it all, a smirk pulls at Kuroo’s mouth.

“Mornin’, kitten.”

Kenma closes their eyes, and pointedly snuggles their muzzle back into their paws. It’s cute, but their presence alone prompts Kuroo to take the distraction while it’s fresh and get dressed before his emotions can really sink in. That creeping dark.

“Come on, I gotta get up,” Kuroo sinks his hand into the fur on Kenma’s back, wonderfully silky, and amber eyes flutter open again into a narrowed expression of feline annoyance. With a few more words of encouragement (and maybe a threat or two pertaining to the well being of a certain PSP charger), the lazy cat rolls off the side of Kuroo’s chest and sprawls against the bed sheets to his side, taking some small vengeance in the white stray furs appearing on Kuroo’s grey sheets.

Kuroo takes the opportunity to sit up, running his hand through his hair and trying his best not to immediately dig his nails into the itch of healing skin tingling against his thighs. It’s a little easier with Kenma there, quiet and watchful, keeping him from slumping back into his bed and hiding from the world - a strange use for a cat’s uncanny ability to take up all remaining space on human sized furniture, but one he is thankful for. He must have opened the curtains before shifting, because a sunless dawn sky is visible in blotches of blue and pink. It must be early. Maybe he was having a nightmare.

The shadows under his eyes ache physically, and he tries to ignore that heaviness as he gathers up an outfit from a wardrobe. He wishes he didn’t have to look at himself in the mornings, could be one of those people that cruised by mirrors and regimes and knew they looked the same, presentable. But he isn’t. He confronts himself each day - his black eyes, predatory features. A darkened messiness he hates, something stolen from his mother, something morphed in blood. 

Kenma sneezes pointedly on the bed. Kuroo remembers where he is.

After pulling on a turtle neck, he pushes into the bathroom and sets his eyes grimly on his features. Kuroo’s too used to his face to antagonize over it especially, but as he’d suspected, his fangs had protruded in the night and bitten into his lower lip. That’d be why his mouth tastes like blood - he’d thought, maybe, it was just scent overwhelming his senses as usual. He’s a increment paler from blood loss, and the darkness under his eyes makes him look a little more dangerous than he prefers to -

Than his clients prefer him to.

But it could be worse. It _has_ been worse.

He fixes his face quietly in front of the sink, washing diluted blood from his lips in tainted water, scrubbing some redness into his cheeks. Artfully arranges his hair to hide his ears. Dresses up like a person, not a monster. Now he’s aware of it, his lip feels swollen, sore to his tongues prodding. Wryly, he hopes it will heal before he opens up. 

Though, maybe not, with his magic busy elsewhere.

The moment he peels back the bandages is the moment Kenma pads into the room. They’re in human shift now, dressed in clothes they must have left behind on another occasion - crumpled but cosy. They look suitably unimpressed with Kuroos (purposely unsuccessful) attempt at cleaning his wounds the night prior, and shoos away his hands from the cuts without a sound. Kuroo settles himself down on the edge of the bath, wrappings falling to the wooden panels beneath as they unwind from ugly, raw skin.

Overnight, the evidence of his internal excavation had, for the most part, healed over. The flesh is a swollen pink, scabs forming at the edges of the gaping incisions in fresh shades of burgundy. They bleed freely when Kenma scrubs over them, their face smoothed back to an impasse as they work; clearing the wound, blotting disinfectant into the lesions with tenderness that still wrings a gasp and bleeding palms out of Kuroo. Kenma whacks his hand gently at the new cuts, and Kuroo relinquishes his claws. There's grotesque evidence of his wrongness right in front of him, dug into partners so obviously matching his shifted claws, paws. If he hooked his fingers, they'd fit into the gorges, if he scratched and squeezed and pinched, they'd be as red as his blood should be. Should have always been.

Kuroo wants to feel guilty. He mostly feels nothing.

When Kenma finishes re-wrapping his thighs, he shifts between Kuroo’s legs slowly, and presses their foreheads together, eyes flickering closed in something that might be pain.

They wait out the sunrise together.

* * *

He’s a little bit tender later, restocking the shelves in his mothers old store. Soft moments with Kenma remind him, in a fiercely nostalgic light, of his teenage years. Of his mother, ushering them to sleep at the early hours when Kenma’s gaming kept them up, of them cooking together, of the fond looks his mother would give them when she discovered them curled up together in their oddly sized cat forms. She’d always been so happy he met Kenma, his first friend after presenting, a second son to her. 

He wasn’t the only one who lost her.

Sighing a little, he presses his head to the shelf of dried herbs, soothing his thoughts with the cool of the wood. It wasn’t necessarily a bad day, but maybe an empty one. His thighs still hurt, and the way shadows pool in his palms make him occasionally double-take, adrenaline crashing like a slow wave. The flickering of candle in this section only adds to a scene that is numbingly familiar.

The door creaks open, Kuroo moves away from his slumb, smooths out his shirt, tries to look busy for the customer. A drift of familiar scent hits him before his voice does, and he’s relaxing before he can fully tense.

“Kuroo? Hey where are - Kuroo!” Bokuto perks up the moment he sees him emerge from between the shelves, and something lights up tight in his chest at the way his whole face breaks out in smile, reforms into something new - just for him. Kuroo doesn’t know what to _do_ with all that attention. Never learned what it’s like to command this much energy.

“Kou, hey.” And Bokuto is already across the shop before he finished speaking, pulling him in a tight hug that smells strongly of crushed pine needles from an air freshener and undercurrents of Akaashi and coffee. Kuroo could die happy here. A little piece of him really wants to.

“What are you doing here, huh?” He asks fondly, instead.

“I’m on my lunch break! And I wanted to see you! Akaashi said I shouldn’t bother you while you’re working, but I really wanted to see you, and it’s not that far from the shop, oh and I saw a bakery on the way and they sold those shortcakes you like - shaped like a cat? But I bought some like an owl, like me. I thought we could share?” He pulls pack, arms still looped around Kuroo’s as he refuses to take a breath, and well - Kuroo can’t say no.

“Yeah, Bo, I’d love that. Kenma’s back there today. I’ll close up a sec, okay?” He runs a hand down Bokuto’s arm, skims across his bracelet, reassures himself the skin and feathers beneath his hands is real. He doesn’t look for the shadows he leaves behind. Bokuto practically vibrates beneath his finger tips.

“Okay!” Bokuto kisses his cheek, and dances around him to the back, calling out Kenma’s name and disappearing from the shop floor in a wash of energy that has his tail feather ruffling as if winded.

Kuroo can picture Kenma’s expression perfectly, and he snorts to himself as he swings over the closed sign, rubbing his cheeks after to scrub away the blush staining beneath his cheekbones. Bokuto does stuff like that, kissing and hugging and giving, like it’s second nature. An extension of himself. It makes Kuroo feel so fragile, a little like ruined goods - it’s hard for him, trusting enough to reach that level of open affection. It’d been years of being kits with Kenma to adjust to grooming, snuggling, the easy physicality they have now hard earned and reinforced again and again. But Bokuto had been sugary warm from the beginning, spilling light and honey in every manic eyed smile and soft glances in between. A barrier in Kuroo has snapped, somewhere in this timeline, and occasionally it’s like an open blister, others, like the best kind of embrace.

He can’t quite wipe away his grin venturing into the backroom, and Kenma shoots him an annoyed but knowing look as Kuroo settles down on the sofa next to Bokuto, brushing their thighs together affectionately. It’s something small, but worth the way Bokuto reaches out to him to squeeze his thigh, how he seems to lean towards him like a flower to the sun.

(He only flinches a little at the tiny prick of talons through his jeans, but Bokuto has a strange look - caught somewhere between a smile and a curious quirk - that tells Kuroo he saw.

Sometimes, not always, Bokuto understands the quiet things.)

Bokuto brings out the shortcake and Kuroo eats his with one hand cupped underneath, which does nothing to slow the descent of crumbs into his lap. No one says a word about the questionable nature of their lunch, and Kuroo’s happy to let it pass as long as Bokuto stays pressed up to him like this, dropping his own crumbs all over Kuroo’s lap and not even trying for damage control. It’s sweet, it’s nice, and Kuroo can laugh without it echoing horribly empty between his ribs.

Even when Bokuto leaves in a mad dash, insisting he’s late but still taking a sickeningly long time to pull Kuroo close with reassuring words on tonight's plans, Kuroo can’t feel cold. The thoughts cross his mind as usual, that he shouldn’t touch Bokuto, that he shouldn’t waste his time, that he’s not worthy of all that attention; they’re still there, but they slip too easily from his mind, won’t let him brood on them. Oil and water. It's an odd sensation, temporary badness, one he's ill accustomed too.

It’s scary, in a way, because he’s always been the type to brood. He’s not sure where his personality ends and his depression begins, and he wonders at what else he thought permanent he might lose to a brief happiness. What’s left of him when he’s with Bokuto is over idealised, things that won’t filter out in the sunlight. He’s left worrying who he is, when he isn’t sad. If he’s just a bundle of nerves frizzing out and shining with Bokuto’s touch. If he’s shallower, where it’s fairer.

(He hopes that Bokuto will still love him when he doesn’t light up at every touch. Will still love him when he can’t smile away the clouds. He doubts.)

Kuroo opens the blinds in front window of the shop, and Kenma naps there through his work shift, stretched out peacefully in the afternoon glow.

* * *

Dawn paints the sky in nauseating reds, too bloody and dirty when cast against the remaining white of dream like clouds. Where his sleeves ride up, his skin is painted _red, red, red,_ and it’s all he can think about as he walks to Bokuto’s work, leg throbbing steadily beneath his weight.

It’s an empty day, or maybe a bad one.

He wonders if he should cancel on Bokuto. Preserve himself longer in his eyes. He thinks it right up to the turning corner of the street and beyond, knowing in his hearts of hearts he can’t resist spending time with Bokuto - not because it’d let him down, but because Kuroo is selfish, Kuroo is greedy, and Kuroo wants that warmth just a moment longer. He can’t make himself let go, not when there’s so little inside.

Whatever wheezing mess he can muster today rises up in his chest as he nears the shop front, spots Bokuto sitting on a bike rack and shifting round, ill at ease with staying stationary for long periods of time. He’s never been good at waiting. Kuroo is a bit too much in love with the way the sun hits from behind, throws up this ridiculous halo effect he’s only seen in movies.

If this was a movie, Bokuto would spot him and wave, would take his hand and smile. They’d go out for Italian, and they’d walk up some kind of river, or maybe a market, and kiss underneath one of those lampposts that lights up a touch slower than the others, eludes something fuzzy and syrupy.

But it’s not a movie, and Bokuto is fiddling with his hair and simultaneously trying to tangle his leg around a metal pole, teeth gritted strangely in determination as his tail feathers catch between his legs. He almost doesn’t want to interrupt him, but he snorts before he can help himself, and suddenly there’s two suns competing to white out his vision.

“Tetsu, hey! I was waiting!” His face is only just visible against the glare behind him.and Kuroo is sure he looks terrible with his face all screwed up like this against the sun, trying to make out Bokuto’s eyes, but he can’t bring himself too care all that much as the hollow in his chest starts to brim up with a stupid brand adoration.

“I missed you, Bo.” He tells him sincerely, dumbly, and squishes his cheeks together in an ugly smash that Bokuto still manages to grin through.

“Oh. Oh, Tetsu, I missed you, too.” He informs him smartly through scrunched lips, and Kuroo lets his face go fondly, catching an affectionate enthusiasm in his partners eyes,“Akaashi said it wasn’t a good idea to have my phone on the shift, but I wanted to text you - a woman came in, and her ears were _exactly_ like that guys from Aoba Seijou - you know with the?” He gestures to his hair.

“Oikawa?”

“No! He was small,”

“Iwaizumi?”

“Yeah! And it reminded me of our first university match, and I was telling Akaashi but I couldn’t remember the other teams there, and I knew that you would know because you’re good with stuff like that, I _really_...”

Kuroo laces their hands together, pressed his scar to Bokuto smooth palm and loses himself in between Bokuto’s words as they traverse the streets to his apartment. They stop to order take out at a udon bar, and the bags keep their free hands warms as dawn fades out from the sky and into a chalky black. The night isn’t all that cold at this time of year, but it’s enough that Kuroo’s instincts are niggling at him to shift out some fur, cover his naked skin.

But he’s warm enough with his coat and Bo at his side, the reluctance sinking heavily to the seat of his abdomen having nothing to do with the particular deathly shade of his furskin, the way it’s shadowy contours blend too seamlessly to the darkness of alleys, crevasses. The kind that haunts restless dreams, seeps from his arteries. Around his waist, he tucks his tail tighter, can't hep but glance around for any other cat shifters; they all know him well. The one who sends off their dead. Preserves them to their ancestors, speaks with their elderly of fading traditions - respected, hated, feared. As if death dogs his steps, like shades in his fur are the veils to the next life. He's never done anything wrong but exist. 

He thinks that may have been his first mistake.

Entering Bokuto’s apartment, he attempts to clear his mind of the lingering cold, focus instead on the peppered black and white of Bokuto’s feathers, revealed garment by garment as Bokuto rids himself of outdoor wear, reaching for lounging clothes strewn about in his room.

Kuroo declines a change of clothes, all too aware of the swollen aching mess of his thighs; something that should have healed by now. On bad days, he doesn't know where his energy goes, but it seems to fade him at the edges, dissipate the tips of his fingers and wisps of his hair into negative space. His magic becomes slow, clotted blood, sticky and dark filling in his cracking seams like a gorey glue.

He keeps busy waiting for Bo by opening the tops of containers on the suspiciously stained coffee table besides a second hand sofa they’d dragged up three stories just to avoid the moving fee, Bokuto keeping his wings out to balance the ridiculous weight on the staircase. It’s a light memory, fluffy and full of Bokuto’s loud, raucous laughter, and it forces Kuroo to smile to himself, despite the clouds fogging his brain.

“Oh, that’s pretty.” He hears from where Bokuto stands in the doorway to his room, hair messed up from pulling on a shirt and staring straight at Kuroo.

“Hmm?”

“Ah, Kuroo! You’re so pretty!” Bokuto repeats, coming forward with a playful smile on his face.

“Nonsense! If I’m anything, it’s devilish handsome, a slick charmer, a man who -”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bokuto talks over him fondly, falling down on the couch and leaning forward to touch at Kuroos hips with the edges of his palms, "But I want cuddles with my pretty boyfriend, not anyone else.”

Kuroo covers his mouth with his hand, feighing surprise, stupid and giddy with their banter all at once.

“You have another boyfriend!?”

Bokuto just whines, pulling on his hips to make him come forward. Kuroo can’t help but laugh, swaying with his hands and straddling him on the sofa edge, settling down over his thighs with a toothy grin. It's easy to ignore the draw of denim against scabs.

“Well hello there,” He greets, bumping their noses together, biting his lip when Bokuto bumps back harder, smiling wide. Bokuto’s hands come up behind him, rubbing across his back and sliding to his waist, big and warm and holding him together. Being this close, Kuroo can feel the solid muscle below him, against him - hot, calloused skin detectable even through his shirt.

“Tetsu- Tetsu, you know I love you more than anything?”

“Oh yeah?”

“More than anything else,”

“Even owls?”

“Yeah.”

“More than volleyball?”

“ _Anything_.”

“That’s a lot of things, Kou.”

“I just love you a lot, Tetsu!” And this time, he meets his eyes to say it, fingers tight on his waist, talons carefully shifted away. There’s something strange Kuroo can’t place in it, a certain playfulness missing in his gaze. His gut clenches uneasily, and he can feel the air displace against his tail as it unwinds from it’s resting place.

“What’s brought this on, Bo? Were things okay at work today?” Kuroo leans in to him, brushes back the wilting strands of his fringe from Bokuto’s eyes, “You took your meds this morning, right baby?”

“Yeah! I did, and everything was fine - jeez, Tetsu. I’m fine. I’m the best, it was just -”

“Just?”

“They said not to say - so please don’t be mad at them, or anything, it’s my fault - but, Kenma said you had a bad day, yesterday.”

Kuroo leans back abruptly.

“Oh.”

“Don’t be mad, please, I asked because you didn’t look good this morning. Well, not good, I like how you look, I’m sorry Tetsu, you know I didn’t mean-”

“I’m not mad, Bo.”

And he wasn’t, he just didn’t like that now he couldn’t pretend to be at his best. Now Bokuto knew he was lying, play-acting at something he wasn’t. Now Bokuto had to be worried, had to _reassure_ Kuroo like some kind of lost child because Kuroo can’t get his shit together-

“I just don’t like it when you have bad days. You always forget how much I love you.”

Bokuto pouts. Tears prick at his eyes. 

“Ah, Bo - you, you can’t just say stuff like that.” He tells him, because he can't. He can't handle too much love - you see, he's not made like that. Of big easy spaces waiting to be filled, collecting compliments and praise and love in baskets to pile to the ceiling. Kuroo is made of small spaces: his childhood bedroom, cubicles of the boys bathroom, the concrete cavern under the bridge to the river where the other kids weren't allowed to play. Places without expectation. Places he can curl up, hold his legs tight to him, and let himself float away.

He doesn't have space for what Bokuto offers. It spills out, instead.

“But it’s true! And - you’re crying, I shouldn’t have said anything, jeez.”

“Come here, you stupid owl.” 

He leans into Bokuto’s chest, wraps one arm around his waist and lets the other hang over to the zenith of his back where a small cluster of feathers, symbolic of where his wings begin when shifted, lay. It was the softest spot , in his half shift, full of layered downy feathers that tickle at his fingertips as he brushes through them. Bokuto melts at the very first touch, slumping easily into Kuroo’s arms like so much hot wax. Kuroo presses his closed eyes into the juncture of Bokuto’s neck, ignores the wetness staining them. He gives himself that moment, Bokuto’s hand liquefying his spine with gentle strokes up the edge of his ears, let’s a quiet purr roll out into the silence.

Bokuto squeezes him tighter at that. 

(It’s nice, having a partner who knows all the sensitive points in a shift.)

“What’s going on, Tetsu?” Kuroo nuzzles deeper, sighing heavily. “If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to, I don’t want to push it, but I don’t care how you’re feeling - oh, no, I mean - you’re important. To me. Happy or sad, you’re _my_ stupidly long cat, you know? Tetsu?”

His chest aches at the words, and he has to force back more tears with a series of deep breaths, hands going shaky against Bokuto’s back. It’s all so saccharine, too good to be true, the way Bokuto’s words head straight towards the heart of his insecurities in the relationship. It hurts a little, because Kuroo knows that insight won’t come from nowhere, that Bokuto must be feeling some degree of what he does during his mood swings. Guilt, like he’s a burden Kuroo as to deal with, rather than someone he loves and wants to support.

He puts so much vulnerability forth between them, trusts Kuroo with parts of himself too fragile for others; and here’s Kuroo, too scared to even admit there’s anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve Bo. He really doesn’t.

He pulls back, trailing along Bokuto’s ribs, willing himself to meet those large, amber eyes.

“I’ll - I want to tell you.” He admits, carefully and slow in his enunciation, “But later, okay? I’m... I’m tired today, Kou. I want to eat these noodles and cuddle, and watch something bad, okay?” He feels frayed, a worn coat with holes in the pockets, a button or two missing. The sludge in his veins is too close to the surface, too fresh where his thighs continue to ache - an open wound, one he can’t irritate further. Not right now.

Maybe, when things are softer.

Bokuto catches his hands in his, pulls Kuroo out of his head with minute effort. 

“Whenever you want, Testu.” He drops a kiss on Kuroos nose, squints his eyes in a funny little way Kuroo knows means he’s holding back a grin. Blood runs hot under his cheeks, and his smile trembles when he presses it to Bo’s lips.

“I love you, Kou, so much.”

(With him, Kuroo is a little less dark. )

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry about the quality of this i really wish i could have done better with the time i had ): because there's a lot of plotholes, i'll add this to a series. if you're interested in seeing more please do subscribe to it ^^
> 
> thank you for taking the time to read this, and i hope it was alright at least! comments are very much appreciated
> 
> and a big shoutout to mack ([akaashikeijis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaashikeijis/pseuds/akaashikeijis)) for existing and encouraging me to finish this, they're really amazing and i recommend all their fics /o/
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://killuay.tumblr.com)


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